Basically I always hear friends and other people talking about how awesome their raid was in WoW. I want a good MMORPG that you don't have to pay for monthly. I looked it up and apparently you don't have to pay monthly for Guild Wars 2, so I'm thinking I might save up for that, considering what I've heard about it. August 23-25 I'm going to try the GW2 free trial to see if I like the game. I've tried Tera, which was fun, but didn't keep me in for too long. I also tried SWTOR which IMO was kind of boring. Free-to-play games are obviously welcome and encouraged. As long as I don't have to pay for the game monthly, and the game only costs somewhere around $70. Thank you

It is in my limited opinion that there are just no MMO's out there right now that are worthy of playing. I've played a lot of them, way too many to feel comfortable admitting to, and not a single one of them is a 'game'. They are at the basic level chat programs with errands to do. Not fun errands, mindless repetitive errands that require you shutting off your brain. The greater your will-power to grind the more powerful you become which is usually within a direct correlation to how poorly you manage your time and skills in real life (Better at MMO, worse at RL).

With F2P you soon realise it's much faster to be powerful (and falsely economical) to just "Pay To Win (P2W)", the problem with this though is everyone has the same mentality and eventually it's not about the grind; it's about spending more and more to be the best. And, since the majority of the upgrading is a chance-based system you'll learn overtime that your F2P MMO is in fact an P2W OSM (Pay to Win, Online Slot Machine).

I would say GW2 is the best at being fun, but the 'end game' is non-existent and it's more likened to a single player game with a bunch of other people running around. PvP is alright. Since you don't actually need to grind to be good at PvP it becomes a more skill-based gameplay, which imho is the better way to do it. Sadly though this removes practically all addictive properties of an MMO and makes it 'boring'.

tl;dr: Buy GW2 if you absolutely need to play an MMO. It's not addicting, and that's a good thing.

Basically I always hear friends and other people talking about how awesome their raid was in WoW. I want a good MMORPG that you don't have to pay for monthly.

There are plenty of private WoW servers to play and honestly I'd recommend trying some of the vanilla servers. They're the base game, the start of the story line that you simply can't get anymore since the original world (and it's story lines/quests) have been replaced in the official world of warcraft servers.

Once you get to lvl 60 and you have a good understanding of the storyline and what the game play is like, you will probably want to consider paying to play WoW and experience the rest of the game.

In saying that, WoW will save you money buy buying a subscription. You'll not want to buy any other games. You'll not go out IRL to socialise, and you'll probably not wash, saving you money in IRL every day.

GW2 isn't a bad, it can be a lot of fun if you get in to it. But most the fun of a MMO comes from grouping up with others. if you have friends playing WoW and enjoying raiding wouldn't you rather join up with them and experience the end game togeather?

The monthly subscription isn't that expensive and if one of you friends wants to level and alt to 90 it could be a good way to see the early content. With the increased experience at early levels it shouldn't take you long to get to at least 60.

You can't go wrong with GW2. The devs are constantly adding content to the game so you always will have something to do. Keep in mind though, it is a PvP focused game. Don't expect focused raids like the ones in WoW (you have a few world bosses and they feel more like a zergfest than a raid).

I find Diablo 3 hardcore to be way more fun (and addictive) than any MMORPG. As they say, it's WoW on crack. The hardcore community is great too. The folks playing HC are way better than those on softcore or any MMO.

I used to be hooked on WoW big time. Thesedays, I just play it when a new expansion comes out - that means about a month once 1.5-2 years. I still think it's one of the best MMORPGs out there (along with the Guildwars), but it's D3 HC that I'm fascinated by.

I find Diablo 3 hardcore to be way more fun (and addictive) than any MMORPG. As they say, it's WoW on crack. The hardcore community is great too. The folks playing HC are way better than those on softcore or any MMO.

I used to be hooked on WoW big time. Thesedays, I just play it when a new expansion comes out - that means about a month once 1.5-2 years. I still think it's one of the best MMORPGs out there (along with the Guildwars), but it's D3 HC that I'm fascinated by.

But D3 isn't an MMO though....

Is also kind of all the grinding of the MMO with none of the other parts, even worse you're just grinding the same stuff over and over...

If you want to run raids with 10-20 people, then yeah, I guess D3 isn't for you.

If you run in close knit groups with friends, D3 is just the same. The only difference is that you don't get to stand in town with hundreds of people to show off your gear.

Is also kind of all the grinding of the MMO with none of the other parts, even worse you're just grinding the same stuff over and over...

And in MMORPG you don't grind? Go to a place X to slaughter beasts Y or to pick up items Z. The words change, the environment changes, but the essence is the same. At least in D3, there's a progression in difficulty. And on HC, your adrenaline level goes through the roof - something that I haven't experienced in any MMORPG. The only thing that comes close is the anticipation of loot just before you kill a boss, and then someone rolls higher than you did and you're like meh...In D3, all loot is yours. And killing a boss on a higher difficulty level for the first time is more rewarding (because of the risk of dying, talking about HC).

No you grind in (most) MMOs to, but unlike D3 that's not all you do, and when you do, you grind more than one very short quest line. I fac for most MMOs you can grind all the way to max level without repeating a single quest and moving along on a single main story arc that lasts from level onetomak level.

And then you have some MMOs like Secret World tha offers unique stuff like the investigation quest that are anything but grinding.

If you want to run raids with 10-20 people, then yeah, I guess D3 isn't for you.

If you run in close knit groups with friends, D3 is just the same. The only difference is that you don't get to stand in town with hundreds of people to show off your gear.

And in MMORPG you don't grind? Go to a place X to slaughter beasts Y or to pick up items Z. The words change, the environment changes, but the essence is the same. At least in D3, there's a progression in difficulty. And on HC, your adrenaline level goes through the roof - something that I haven't experienced in any MMORPG. The only thing that comes close is the anticipation of loot just before you kill a boss, and then someone rolls higher than you did and you're like meh...In D3, all loot is yours. And killing a boss on a higher difficulty level for the first time is more rewarding (because of the risk of dying, talking about HC).

So, from my perspective, it goes like this:

Play any MMORPG if you want to relax and kill time.

Play D3 HC if you want some real action which makes you sweat.

You forgot to add the part about Diablo where you farm the same content , and that the only refreshing thing is what adjectives the next mob is going to have. That said Diablo 3 was fun, but if the OP do not wish to farm the same locations over and over, then Diablo is not a game for him.
As a CO-OP game Diablo 3 was great, but from a personal viewpoint it got boring and i never felt overly excited to be playing it after I made it into the harder difficulties.

And to comment on the real action part; You get the same action from an MMO! Just stay out of stuff that hurts you and you'll be doing fine.

You forgot to add the part about Diablo where you farm the same content , and that the only refreshing thing is what adjectives the next mob is going to have. That said Diablo 3 was fun, but if the OP do not wish to farm the same locations over and over, then Diablo is not a game for him.
As a CO-OP game Diablo 3 was great, but from a personal viewpoint it got boring and i never felt overly excited to be playing it after I made it into the harder difficulties.

And to comment on the real action part; You get the same action from an MMO! Just stay out of stuff that hurts you and you'll be doing fine.

In end-game MMORPG, you farm the same instances over and over again to get geared. At least in D3, the higher level mobs with more affixes challenge you to evaluate and perfect your build all the time (what works in nightmare may not work in hell and so on).